In fairness I think blame can be shared to both King and Bowyer when it comes to his tenure here. Bowyer obviously didn't use King very effectively, but there were a few issues surrounding that which people have forgotten. King tended to only play well for us through the middle, so as blueboy says, who do you drop for King? Both Rhodes and Gestede were scoring truckloads at the time so it would have made no sense to bench either of them. The other major issue was that King was pretty injury prone here, and spent plenty of time in the treatment room which hampered his ability to achieve a consistent run of form. There were also times he looked disinterested and was very selfish, often preferring to run down blind alleys and try to take on players as opposed to bringing his team mates into the game. He was very young at the time so you can forgive that to some extent, but when you're talking about dropping one of two goalscoring strikers during a time when we were generally doing fairly well you can understand Bowyer's hesitation. In retrospect what we were doing was not enough to get into a playoff spot, and maybe King should have been given more of a chance, but it's easy to say in hindsight. There wasn't exactly an outcry when King left the club. Some annoyance but he had been so inconsistent during his time here that nobody was sure which way his career would go,

Tbf we normally sign strikers for that.

Pretty much. My main concern going into next season would be whether we can keep Dack, as replacing him would be very difficult. We also have to consider the likes of Graham and Mulgrew getting on in age, which means performances could drop off or injuries start increasing at any time. We've been quite lucky so far for both as far as injuries are concerned, but as it stands we realistically have nobody to take Graham's spot if he is suddenly out for an extended period. Nuttall has done well in the last couple of matches but there would be a huge drop in quality if he was to replace Graham long term. There are a lot of questions for next season which will concern me even if we have a good top ten finish this season.

No chance of us getting into the playoffs imo, it'll be the same as under GB, as soon as we get close we'll start falling away. The consistency and quality just isn't there yet. A top ten finish would be a good start and a base to build on assuming Venky's don't randomly decide to do something stupid in the next 12 months. You can never be sure.

From a different article: It's enough to make me wonder if the Ipswich Star is actually a parody site.

Same old stuff, "nothing to do with us guv" ... although apparently Paul Lambert has "genuinely fallen in love with the club", which is just hilarious.

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/sport/ipswich-town/stuart-watson-s-sunday-verdict-blackburn-2-ipswich-0-1-5859004 An interesting if not somewhat baffling insight into the mind of an Ipswich Town supporter/reporter these days. TL;DR: Lambert's record is as bad as Hurst's statistically and he's bringing in a ton of loans despite saying that's exactly what the club shouldn't be doing, and he's freezing the youngsters out of the team, but that aside it's good that he's said he's staying.

It's the same with the Ipswich Star tbf. They've been bottom of the league most if not the entire season, losing to practically everybody, but you rarely see a player get scored below 5. Most of the time it's a 6 even though the description will read something like "made mistakes and never imposed himself on the game, but ran around a lot". I dread to think what a player would have to do to get a 1 or a 2. The reporters here would have given Shane Duffy's performance for us against Cardiff a 6. "Two own goals and a red card aside, solid enough". That said they were particularly harsh this week!

No idea. If the EFL want this to be illegal then make the necessary regulations. Don't see how you can punish someone for breaking a rule that doesn't exist. Not sure why we're complaining about it, anyway. We beat them first time around, and were about to do the same the second time around before our team collectively shit the bed in the final minutes. Nothing to do with spying. In fact, if Leeds' performance against us was the result of them spying on our training we should invite them round next time.

I thought it seemed a bit odd that he had no assists last season at all, but it's certainly something that will need to improve at this level. With the way Mowbray ultimately wants to play (with two inside strikers and the dreaded three at the back) the wing backs are a crucial part of the assists mechanism along with the no. 10 (in our case Dack). If the wing backs don't provide assists in that formation then it's basically all left up to Dack, which is what we've seen for large portions of Mowbray's tenure, and it severly limits our creativity. That said we still seem really far away from Mowbray's ideal system at the moment. Whenever he tries three at the back it seems to be a bit of a disaster, and a standard 4-2-3-1 leaves the inside forwards as wingers and negates the wing back role entirely.

I'd agree, although wayne seems to have completely missed the stability era so it's tough to make a comparison pre-2012 that would make much sense.

He always looks clumsy to me when defending one-on-one, but he doesn't often let the player past him so maybe that's just how it is. I just had a quick check and apparently Nyambe has absolutely no assists (or goals) since he started appearing in the first team, so still some improvement needed there. You'd expect him to have at least a couple of assists considering how often he's pushing forward in games.

Yep, he's obviously not impressing across the board, despite Mowbray's protestations that he's a finishing machine in training. We need to make a decision on Brereton before the window shuts, as him hanging around making the bench every so often for another five months is going to do nothing for him or us.

I don't think Nyambe is a great or even particularly good defender anyway, so I'm not sure it would make much difference. Nyambe's plus points are his athleticism, strength and ability to relentlessly bomb forward which is more important as an attacking wing back than a full back. If we hadn't been conceding late goals for fun over the Christmas period I think Mowbray may have been braver and put Nyambe at RWB yesterday, but if he feels he needs experienced players on the pitch to minimise errors and ensure games are being seen out correctly then I can't say I blame him.

Is it a coincidence that Bennett was out during almost the entirety of our slump in form, and since he's returned we've suddenly improved? It's obviously not all down to him but his contributions are grossly underappreciated imo. Maybe the reason Bennett is in at right back ahead of Nyambe is because TM feels he needs experience on the pitch, rather than young heads who have proven themselves to be mentally weak when they have to defend a lead? Again not a knock on Nyambe specifically as he's obviously been a part of a lot of good moments in the past couple of years, but I can see where Mowbray is coming from as far as getting Bennett onto the pitch, even if it isn't in his preferred position.

To be fair there are all sorts of if, ands and but that other teams in this division could apply to their own stats that would see them placed higher as well. Nothing useful will come of dwelling on the points we could have had - we didn't get them because we weren't good enough to get them. The trick isn't to look back and be annoyed but to learn from those mistakes and make sure it doesn't happen going forward. There are tentative signs lately that we're getting there, although we made unnecessarily hard work of the WBA game by conceding and we nearly let Ipswich back into the game yesterday with a stupid miscommunication between keeper and defender as well. Until those silly lapses in concentration stop we haven't improved enough to say we're over that hurdle.

We made it harder on ourselves by missing chances in the first half, but a win is a win and a rare clean sheet in addition will do nicely.

Another half time at home where we go in 0-0. You could confidently put money on it at this point.

Their transformation since we played them at the KC is remarkable, especially considering they haven't changed manager.

Apparently Lambert has told the Ipswich chairman he wants all of Hurst's signings gone by next season the starting line up seems that reflect that.

Wouldn't be surprised to see him resign "in protest" around the end of June/start of July when he realises Evans is going to sell everyone and expect to get promoted first time with nothing but free transfers and hard work.

Lambert committed to staying at Ipswich, even in the highly likely event they go down: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/46918827 I guess you can only jump ship so many times before it becomes damaging to your reputation.

Whoops. Good thing I can't be idenitifed by my profile on here. I hope.

There's nothing unpredictable about Ipswich. They're extremely poor and their only wins have either been total flukes or against similarly poor teams who have usually had the better of the game against them. This is as bad of a team as you're going to come up against in the Championship, and bringing in a few desperados in on a free isn't going to change that. Unfortunately for us, Mowbray's managerial style means that we play the same way regardless of the quality of the opposition, making the majority of games a 50/50 affair. So despite Ipswich being a terrible team I fully expect we will allow them to have an even game against us, worrying about their left back or whatever overanalysis will come into play to hinder what should be a commanding performance against a team nailed on for the drop. I still think the scoreline will read a fairly comfortable victory for Rovers, but the stats will show we gave Ipswich too much respect.

Collins is a very good signing for Ipswich, but injuries have been an issue for him. It's the risk you take when signing an older player, especially in the modern game. Look at what happened to Jonathon Walters. That said that's probably more of a long term concern for Ipswich, from our perspective Collins is likely to be in the team on Saturday and will certainly give Ipswich far better defensive solidarity than they've had for most of this season. That said even a team with our limited creativity should be able to score a couple past Ipswich. As with most games at any level it's about keeping the door closed at the back. In retrospect conceding two against Ipswich on the first day of the season was pretty embarrassing. Can't let that happen again.